Léon Arvel

A young girl marries an attractive but very busy businessman. So busy, that on the wedding day, he has no hesitation in taking an unexpected trip.

The adventures of a pompous jeweler who refuses to listen to the advice of his level-headed employees. In due time, the jeweler is robbed, but his sharp-eyed subordinate manages to prevent the villains from getting very far. Wising up in a hurry, the jeweler finally proves himself worthy of the love of the heroine.

A wrongfully convicted man finds himself suspected of a crime committed in his prison.

In the spring of 1913, Jean Servin, a son of a family, became friends with Roberte, a little midinette. He leaves her a few months later to marry Cécile Breton. The years go by. Jean becomes an important businessman. One evening, he meets Roberte, who has become the wife of a wealthy American. She does not love her husband any more than he loves his wife. They recall their memories. They seem to still love each other. They plan to rebuild their lives. Together, they will spend a few days in Dieppe, as they did in the past after their first meeting. They feel so different from what they were twenty years ago that they understand that the past cannot live again.

Following a quarrel with his father, Prince Jean joined the Foreign Legion. When he returns, he finds his brother who, on the king's death, usurped his title, and the woman he loved, betrothed to another. Helped by a very rich and philosophical old uncle, Jean, disgusted with classes and politics, flees with the young woman.

A commander who had devised helpful defenses for his country kills a spy who'd tried to entrap him.The officer's young wife who had been thinking of leaving him for a minister, rallies to his side.

Before the Battle is the English-language title of this espionage melodrama. The first half of the film takes place aboard a French cruising ship, steaming through dangerous waters during WWI. Among the passengers is heroine Jeanne (Annabella), who was once in love with first-officer D'Artelles (Robert Vidalin) but he now seems strangely preoccupied. It turns out that the ship is on a secret mission, which ultimately dooms the vessel to a Lusitania-like death. After the sinking, Captain De Corlaix (Victor Francen) faces a court-martial, and it is at this point that the film clarifies several baffling plot points. Despite its complexity, the story is fairly believable, with the exception of the grafted-on romantic subplot.

A rich banker is actually a crook. His mistress, an alien, wants to become French and the only way is to marry a Frenchman.

A lady who had a secret affair lives in fear.

The Marquis de Barfleur, an unattractive man, decides to resort to plastic surgery to ensure the fidelity of Colette, his young mistress. Now endowed with a face to die for, he is about to achieve his goal. But the Marchioness de Barfleur, the Marquis' loving wife, does not hear it that way. She has her revenge claiming everywhere that her husband is... dead! An assertion people believe since they do not recognize the Marquis! When her vengeance has lasted long enough, she forgives the Marquis and husband and wife fall into each other's arms.

A tramp learns that even honesty won't help him overcome his struggles to prosper. After a man tells him that he needs to smile in order to succeed, he turns his attitude around and he becomes successful.

Blanchette, unable to find a job, prostitutes herself in Paris. She then finds the man she loves when her morale is at its lowest.

The mistress of an engineer meets the man's pregnant wife and decides to give up the liaison.

The workers Legendre and Martinet have won a large sum in the national lottery. Instead of squandering it, they had the good idea to invest it in industry. Happy in business, they soon find themselves at the head of a fortune. But their characters are very different. Legendre, who is brave and honest, narrowly escapes the malevolence of a couple of harlots. Martinet, his former work companion, has become a crooked and formidable financier. Both will face each other in court, the honesty of the first finally triumphing over the greed of the second.

Because of the escapades of Alexis, the Crown Prince of Vodenia, the kingdom is likely to lose the loan lent to them by a rich foreign banker. Baron Patcheff, a minister, decides then to replace the Prince by a double. The man chosen is Castin, a Parisian haberdasher, who looks like Alexis feature for feature.

The film depicts events between the Fashoda crisis in 1898 and the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on the book King Edward VII and His Times by André Maurois. It was made with an eye to its propaganda value, following the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and in anticipation of the outbreak of a Second World War which would test the bonds between Britain and France in a conflict with Nazi Germany.

The forbidden romance between wealthy Giselle Preville and impoverished journalist Claude Dauphin. When Preville disappears, Dauphin is accused of kidnapping by the girl's snobbish father Rene Alexander. By the time the Normandie reaches New York, however, the "mystery" is solved and all misunderstandings blithely swept away.

Agnès Bonnardet leaves her parents to marry Claude Sironi, a painter who becomes famous but loses his talent. Meanwhile Agnes acquires a style of her own as an artist, which makes Claude jealous of his young wife. One day, he sends one of his own paintings to the Bazar de la Charité, a very trendy Paris department store, instead of one of his wife's works as ordered. Afraid of her being mad at him, he locks her up in the cloak room. A dreadful fire suddenly breaks out and sets the building ablaze.

Betrayed by his wife, a teacher proceeds to have an affair with a young and pretty student. The two women both find themselves expecting a child. The girl dies during childbirth. In a spirit of revenge and to keep his real son, the scorned husband exchanges the babies.

Director Jean Delannoy's immediate followup to his brilliant Les Jeux sont Faits was the more conventional Aux Yeux du Souvenir (aka Souvenir and To the Eyes of Memory). The film is based on a true story, wherein an France airliner managed to survive a journey from Rio De Janeiro to Dakar with two of its engines incapacitated. To this already intensely dramatic situation has been added a romantic subplot involving Claire Magny (Michele Morgan) and Jacques Forester (Jean Marais). The love story adds very little to the film; fortunately, neither does it detract from the film's overall quality. As was the case with many French productions of the 1940s, Aux Yeux du Souvenir benefits immeasurably from the Wagnerian musical score by Georges Auric.

Stanislas Oscar Seminario, aka SOS, is a young explorer, just back from Africa, visiting old friends: the Pescara's. But the father keeps receiving anonymous letters. And soon a mysterious murder is committed. SOS begins to investigate...

Noël is a bachelor who inherits a matrimonial agency. After contemplating selling it, he chooses to manage it.

Filmed in French Morocco, Itto's dialogue is spoken primarily in the tribal Chleuh language. The jingoistic story concerns a series of clashes between French occupational forces and a rebellious Chleuh chieftain. Itto (Simone Berriau), chief's daughter, becomes embroiled in a romance with a Moroccan tribesman who has gone over to the French side. It is implied in Itto that it's okay to betray one's own people if it will preserve French colonialism in Africa. To modern viewers, the rampant chauvinism in Itto is a difficult pill to swallow.

Philippe Lutcher, an anarchist, fires a shot at Clara Stuart, a famous stage and screen actress, but only wounds her. The star, through affectation and curiosity to know his motives, pleads in his favour at his trial, but he rebuffs her pity. After he has served 18 months in prison, they meet and fall in love.

During the First World War, before joining a squadron at the front in 1918, Herbillon (Jean-Pierre Aumont) has a liaison with Helene (Annabella), a married woman. The young man discovers that his mistress is none other than the wife of Maury (Charles Vanel), an aviator friend.

A French-language remake of Douglas Sirk's "The Court Concert" (1936).

Based on a novel by Maurice Dekobra, the film is set in Yoshiwara, the red-light district of Tokyo, in the nineteenth century. It depicts a love triangle between a high-class prostitute, a Russian naval officer, and a rickshaw man.

An inexperienced, sickly priest shows up in the rural French community of Ambricourt, where he joins the community's clergy. But the locals don't take kindly to the priest, and his ascetic ways and unsociable demeanor make him an outcast. During Bible studies at the nearby girls school, he is continually mocked by his students. Then his attempt to intervene in a family feud backfires into a scandal. His failures, compounded with his declining health, begin to erode his faith.

David is a poor but ambitious Polish Jew who reinvents himself as a powerful New York business magnate. After gaining wealth, he relocates to Paris, only to have his selfish and demanding wife squander his fortune.

The plot focuses on Gaillac (Albert Prejean), an electrician employed by the Paris Opera. In love with gorgeous ballerina Suzanne (Gaby Morlay), Gaillac must play second fiddle to Suzanne's wealthy "protector," powerful politician Count Montoire (Henry Roussell). When the Opera personnel go on strike, Gaillac is appointed leader of the strikers, doing his job so well that he is ultimately elected Secretary of Labor in the French cabinet. Now on equal footing with Montoire, Gaillac is at last a "worthy" suitor for Suzanne -- who can't make up her mind between her two well-connected admirers, leading to a political rivalry the likes of which Paris has never seen. This harmless political satire ended up being banned by the French government for undermining "the dignity of Parliament and its ministers". (moviefone.com)

While still behind bars, a crook manages several schemes including one that almost gets his penniless young lawyer into trouble.The crook's mistress, married to a rich man, then becomes attracted to the lawyer.

Claire Buisson becomes enamored with Gerard and soon afterwords she becomes pregnant. Gerard advises her to abort the child but, at the last moment, Claire decides to keep her child and leaves for her sister's place in the province.

Monsieur Serval has made a deal with his daughter Jacqueline. She can be a lawyer and act her own way provided that, in a given period of time, she becomes a great name of the profession. If she does not, she must pledge herself to marry the son of a rich man, Monsieur Feutrier. Jacqueline accepts and starts her career by defending Pierre Besnard, a bad Boy. Not only does she get the case dismissed but she falls in love with Pierre as well. But she is not famous for all that and sooner or later she will have to bring herself to marry Feutrier's son.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Duke of Gerolstein traveled to Paris. Sixteen years earlier he had a daughter who was taken from him by her mother who was chased out of the palace. After many dramatic adventures, the Duke finds his daughter in the person of Fleur de Marie, martyred throughout her childhood by the Owl and the schoolmaster.

Two women love the same man in a world of few prospects. In Budapest, Liliom is a "public figure," a rascal who's a carousel barker, loved by the experienced merry-go-round owner and by a young, innocent maid. The maid, Julie, loses her job after going out with Liliom; he's fired by his jealous employer for going out with Julie. The two lovers move in with Julie's aunt; unemployment emasculates him and a local weasel tempts him with crime. Julie, now wan, is true to Liliom even in his bad temper. Meanwhile, a stolid widower, a carpenter, wants to marry Julie. Is there any future on this earth for Julie and Liliom, whose love is passionate rather than ideal?

The residents of the apartment building on Rue Montmartre are a motley crew of oddballs and eccentrics. The daring son of a professor couple is in love with a sexy student who supplements her pocket money by working as an au pair. And then there's Monsieur Calomel, the crazy but helpful neighbor who's always ready with a funny face...

In 1913, in Russia, a widower hides from his daughter that he is a butler in a meeting restaurant. She meets a banker who is trying to seduce her and takes her to this restaurant. The father, knowing the decadent life of this client, immediately sends his daughter home. The pure love that her piano teacher devotes to her will allow the young girl to console herself for her disappointments...

During the war from '14-'18, two women travel by foot in the North of France and Belgium to aid an organization to provide information to the English

Bastien and Ségard decide to leave France for Canada. They buy tickets aboard a rickety craft, the Tenacity, that never quite seems able to leave port. While stuck there they both fall for the innkeeper's daughter, which causes them to rethink their Canadian notions.